EAGLES AND ART. 243 



"With such a heathenish faith as this, what wonder then 

 that his ideas of beauty should be somewhat heterodox, and 

 that he should even look upon the rude and ancient counte- 

 nance of Earth with favor? Nay, since this Love is a great 

 revelator and beautifier of all things, should even regard it 

 as very fair, and fresh, and lovely. 



But though marvellous, it is nevertheless so ; and we judge 

 the truth to be, that it is because he is no stranger upon her 

 bosom, and is troubled with no such exaltation of spiritual 

 mightiness, that he disdains the ground he treads upon. In 

 his simplicity he has probably found out, while she warmed 

 him in her nourishing embrace, that he was bone of her 

 bone and flesh of her flesh ; ay, and has even felt that the 

 throbbings of her great heart were heaved with the pulses 

 of his own ! 



What wonder, then, since he thus looks out upon Earth as 

 a child of the earth, that 



" Beated and chapped with tanned antiquity," 



as she may seem to others, she should yet appear fair and 

 young to him ? What wonder that he loves her too, and 

 smiles in unconscious pity when the Learned Ninny talks in 

 pompous humiliation of u our humble origin," and with face 

 averted from his Old Mother, rants spiritual heroics at the 

 stars ? 



What wonder, indeed, if in his innocence he should laugh 

 at the emasculated wretch? As if Earth, too, were not a 

 Star, sister of the Planets, bride of the Sun, and a daughter 

 of the Most High God ! 



What wonder, if his jealous love should be indignant at 

 the insult, when he sees that a chafiing-dish would be sun 

 enough for the world and heart of the blue-lipped haughty 

 Pedant, and that yet, standing isolated upon heaped-up 

 tomes a world of man's creating he dares, with out- 

 stretched shaky finger, like a shrunk and withered brat, to 

 be imperious with his Ancient Mother to summons her to 



